Book Review: 'High Rise Stories,' edited by Audrey Petty

Chicago's housing projects could seem like war zones, garbage dumps, brothels or drug dens. They were also people's homes.

By

Walter Vatter

Sept. 23, 2013 4:06 pm ET

When Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes opened in 1962, the complex was the largest public-housing project in the world: 28 high-rise buildings, each 16 stories high. At the groundbreaking ceremony, Mayor Richard J. Daley addressed the crowd under a banner that read: "GOOD HOMES BUILDING GOOD CITIZENS." "This project represents the future of a great city," he said. "It represents vision . . . a decent home for every family." The complex—housing 27,000 people at its peak, in 4,415 apartments—was situated in a dense, black neighborhood east of the Dan Ryan Expressway, in those days the line of racial...